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The Mad Cow disease, which was first spotted in the US in December 2003, could very well affect cattle once again.
With cattle feed being substituted with cheap alternatives like chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers, the disease could once again start infecting the country's livestock.
Though the Bush administration had taken steps to keep the disease under check, it became business as usual when the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated.
John Stauber, an activist and co-author of "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" explained that "the entire US policy is designed to protect the livestock industry's access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed."
The government is now investigating another possible case of the disease in the United States. The beef cow had been tested last November and declared disease-free, but when new tests came up positive, a laboratory in England started conducting more tests.
The Food and Drug Administration promised to tighten feed rules shortly after the first case of the disease was confirmed in the US.
The FDA had promised it would ban blood, poultry litter and restaurant waste from cattle feed and order feed mills to use separate equipment to make cattle feed. But, it has still not done what it had promised.
Unlike other infections, mad cow disease doesn't spread through the air. As far as scientists know, cows get the disease only by eating brain and other nerve tissues of already infected animals. Ground-up cattle remains from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when an outbreak of mad cow cases in Britain prompted the United States to order the feed industry to stop doing it. Unlike Britain, however, the US feed ban has exceptions.
For example, it is legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed.
Cattle protein can also be fed to chickens, pigs and household pets, which presents the risk of accidental contamination in a feed mill.
Companies, which process slaughter waste, say that the restrictions would be costly and create hazards from leftover waste.
"We process about 50 billion pounds of product annually. That is a convoy of semi trucks, four lanes wide, running from New York to LA every year," said Jim Hodges, president of the meatpacking industry's American Meat Institute Foundation.
Cattle trade "should not resume unless and until" loopholes in the feed ban are closed, according to an internal Agriculture Department memo, written by its working group of experts in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America obtained the memo as part of its lawsuit against the department.
Even though the loopholes remain, the Agriculture Department late last year approved reopening the border. Only a federal judge in Montana is keeping the border closed. He sided with R-CALF, which fears that another infected cow shipped in might be carrying the disease, just like the lone US case found in Washington state in 2003.
With cattle feed being substituted with cheap alternatives like chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers, the disease could once again start infecting the country's livestock.
Though the Bush administration had taken steps to keep the disease under check, it became business as usual when the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated.
John Stauber, an activist and co-author of "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" explained that "the entire US policy is designed to protect the livestock industry's access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed."
The government is now investigating another possible case of the disease in the United States. The beef cow had been tested last November and declared disease-free, but when new tests came up positive, a laboratory in England started conducting more tests.
The Food and Drug Administration promised to tighten feed rules shortly after the first case of the disease was confirmed in the US.
The FDA had promised it would ban blood, poultry litter and restaurant waste from cattle feed and order feed mills to use separate equipment to make cattle feed. But, it has still not done what it had promised.
Unlike other infections, mad cow disease doesn't spread through the air. As far as scientists know, cows get the disease only by eating brain and other nerve tissues of already infected animals. Ground-up cattle remains from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when an outbreak of mad cow cases in Britain prompted the United States to order the feed industry to stop doing it. Unlike Britain, however, the US feed ban has exceptions.
For example, it is legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed.
Cattle protein can also be fed to chickens, pigs and household pets, which presents the risk of accidental contamination in a feed mill.
Companies, which process slaughter waste, say that the restrictions would be costly and create hazards from leftover waste.
"We process about 50 billion pounds of product annually. That is a convoy of semi trucks, four lanes wide, running from New York to LA every year," said Jim Hodges, president of the meatpacking industry's American Meat Institute Foundation.
Cattle trade "should not resume unless and until" loopholes in the feed ban are closed, according to an internal Agriculture Department memo, written by its working group of experts in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America obtained the memo as part of its lawsuit against the department.
Even though the loopholes remain, the Agriculture Department late last year approved reopening the border. Only a federal judge in Montana is keeping the border closed. He sided with R-CALF, which fears that another infected cow shipped in might be carrying the disease, just like the lone US case found in Washington state in 2003.
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